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LPE Blog

Status As Sword

While employers have long conflated status with vulnerability, workers are starting to show how status itself can also be as a source of power — one that the courts, co-workers, and the public increasingly see as justification for broad-based change.

LPE and the Global Food Crisis

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices are higher in real terms today than at any point since the early 1970s. Yet it is the underlying political economy of the global food system that has created the conditions where hundreds of millions of people don’t get enough to eat.

Labor Coercion and the Status/Economy Distinction

Employers wield power over workers by virtue of control over their institutional status and not solely, or even principally, by virtue of the power to cut off wages. Yet, in attempting to distinguish “status” and “economic” coercion, we must avoid the idea that status is implicitly non-economic and the economy operates apart from. . .

Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment

Economic coercion is not the only power dynamic that shapes labor relations. In a range of cases – including prison laborers, welfare workers, college athletes, and graduate students – employers exercise power over workers by controlling their “status” and all of the rights, privileges, and opportunities that such status confers.

Weekly Roundup: July 8, 2022

A call for courage in the wake of West Virginia v. EPA, a reckoning with the arc of the American rights tradition, and a discussion of what it would take to build worker and union power in the 21st century economy. Plus, an upcoming all-star Antimonopoly event and a recently released state-level antimonopoly reform guide.

Weekly Roundup: July 1, 2022

An emerging shadow legal system in eviction court, six reactions to Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, and the importance of reforming regressive property tax regimes. What can’t we do? Plus, a CFP for a conference on Commodification and the Law, Blake Emerson on West Virginia v. EPA, and even more on the Anti-Oligarchy Constitution.

How Civil Probation is Rewriting Eviction Law

When tenants head to eviction court, they often sign settlements that allow them to remain in their home so long as they abide by certain conditions. If they violate any of the conditions, they can be evicted through an expedited, alternative legal process, in which they have few procedural or substantive rights. This system of “civil probation,” overlooked. . .